Is India ready for learning online?

It is from past couple of years that world is thinking and talking about using Social Networks or Social Media for Education. The evolving world of communication and technology offering tags, blogs, podcasts, file swapping – all at finger tips, is offering revolutionary ways to connect, create, learn, think and research among Students and Teachers. Truth is that Social Media (YouTube, Blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, et al,) have become the backbone of how the world communicates. Myth is that we are still pretending to be ignorant saying ‘this will not last long’ to ourselves.

Social Networking comes under the big banner of Social Media and it brings together people around a new idea or a topic of common interest. Academicians are much aware of the pros and cons of using Social Networking in classrooms.  A small percentage of them are intelligently using Social networking tools for educating but a large percentage are either having restriction in using Social tools or a complete ban.

Educators must give a thought towards it. A graduate out of college lacking not just the understanding but a working knowledge of social media and social networking tools is at a huge competitive disadvantage. As Educators, we are failing in our mission if we are not preparing the Students for ‘Present’ world workforce.

Are we socially connected?

If we pay close attention towards the statistics of the usage of Social networking tools, it only surprises us more and may be an eye opener for many! I will talk about the usage statistics of major five Social tools in India as an example.

Top 5 countries using Facebook

(*sourced from Alexa.com)

 

Top 5 countries using Twitter

 

(*sourced from Alexa.com)

 

Top 5 countries using YouTube

(*sourced from Alexa.com)

 

Top 5 countries using LinkedIn

 

(*sourced from Alexa.com)

Top 5 countries using Google+

(*sourced from Alexa.com)

 

 

 

 

India stands at position 2 or 3 in most of the Social tools. The obvious reason would be its growing population but doesn’t it alarm us of how much percentage of the population are comfortably using the Social networking tools though the affordability of technology is not so proportionate. One more interesting finding is that except for the LinkedIn (used majorly for Work between Age group of 25-44), all other social networking tools like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, Blogs – are being used majorly in Schools between Age group of 16-34.

Why should we use collaborative learning tools?

When the usage and involvement is at such a peak, why don’t we try route this interest towards education? Many teachers, despite holding Master and Doctoral degrees, are hesitant to use these popular Social networking tools in classrooms, given their inherent risk of exposing students to inappropriate content. This is like neither the stick should break nor the snake should die!

Schools of today must reflect the world we live in and we now live in a social world. Educators need to teach students how to be effective collaborators in that world, how to interact with people around them, how to be engaged and how to be an informed 21^st century citizen. This rather breaks the barrier and helps to build an academic networking inside of the social networking!

One obvious reason for the hesitation of Teachers to use Facebook and Twitter in classrooms is that Facebook is limited to ages 13 and over while Twitter has no age restrictions. Educators succumb to the fear of making Students a part of the virtual world, which has all different communities not so apt for Education.

Bring Social back into learning

Schools can even opt the best social learning tools existing exclusively for Education and make use of it in variety of ways:

1. Create an account for students to connect among peers of same school versus the peers from different school. Make them Collaborate about a project or about a test. This will help students to know when a study session is happening or give them an outlet to talk to a group member for a project or assignment.
2. Teachers can create homework assignments, class notes, tests or any class videos onto a class account/page in case students were absent or forgot to write down while at class can benefit.
3. A common virtual space for students to ask the teacher or another student, a question, discussion or opinion – outside school hours.
4. Students can access additional/alternate study materials related to their course of study, from these Social learning platforms which source such content from top scholars of the world.